The Billionaire's Obsession

The elevator doors opened to the forty-seventh floor, and Aria Morgan felt her stomach drop faster than the express lift had carried her up.

Steele Enterprises. The name alone made lesser companies tremble across Wall Street. And here she was—in a borrowed navy blazer with sleeves a quarter-inch too short, low heels pinching her toes, and a résumé that was more desperate hope than credentials.

"You must be the two o'clock."

Behind the sweeping white marble reception desk sat a razor-thin woman with sleek dark hair pulled into an unforgiving chignon and an illuminated Bluetooth headset glowing beside her ear. A brass nameplate on the marble read *Miranda Vance — Executive Reception*. Miranda's cool hazel eyes did an instantaneous, clinical scan of Aria—from the frayed cuffs of her blazer to her trembling knuckles clutching a manila folder—and found her utterly lacking.

"Take a seat," Miranda instructed, not waiting for a reply as her manicured fingers clicked across a mechanical keyboard. "Mr. Steele is running behind. His last meeting ran ten minutes over because a junior vice president forgot how to calculate derivative yields."

Aria sat on a butter-soft leather armchair that probably cost more than six months of her Brooklyn rent. Around her, the executive floor gleamed like a fortress of glass, black granite, and brushed steel. Floor-to-ceiling panoramic windows forty-seven floors above Park Avenue framed the glittering expanse of the Manhattan skyline, where yellow taxicabs crawled forty-seven stories below like worker ants. But inside Aria's chest, cold adrenaline buzzed like a live electric wire.